 What's up navigation traders welcome to this week's video update today is Friday, February 22nd Where we recap all the trades for the week exclusively for our pro members Before we jump into the alerts just want to recognize this week's member in our community for helping other traders who got caught being hot and this week we wanted to recognize a Member who's who's been in the community for a while quite a while now since we first got it started Alan Calder Congrats Alan you got caught being hot and Alan's in there answering question post posting in the community and one thing that he he've referenced to to me personally was looking at the ETF with the ticker IEF and And you know wondering if it's a good measure for implied volatility against the 10-year notes You know the TLT has a little bit longer duration So we always kind of look at that for both bonds and notes because it's kind of in between But he pointed out that IEF is actually a little bit shorter duration and could be a little bit better Indicator when we're looking at the IV levels for the notes and so I agree now Let me let me just take a look at that and show you what I'm talking about So I've got both on my board now, so you've got TLT and IEF now look at the the options There's there if we open up the monthly marches for example, you'll see that there's some really good open interest It's still it's not tradable. There's just not enough premium in here to trade the actual ETF But there is sufficient Open interest to give us a good indication on our implied volatility indicator now also keep in mind I mean this thing is a little bit choppy. We like to be a little bit smoother as far as the The expansions and contractions But it's it's just another tool and remember we're just using this implied volatility indicator To give us an idea of the options are cheap or expensive So just having another indicator when we're trading notes versus bonds is just another good thing to look at So congrats, Alan. You got caught being hot. I sent you a link to grab some trade hacker swag So enjoy that and keep up the good work All right, let's jump into the alerts now short week of trading as Monday was president's day so the markets were closed and then today Friday we didn't send out any alerts because we didn't need to make any adjustments didn't want to make any closes and Did not want to make any entries with implied volatility contracting so No trades Monday or Friday, but let's jump through the the alerts that we did make starting with Tuesday We did a rolling adjusting trade in CL our oil position And we rolled this from April to May and we adjusted our calls So we were a little bit inverted we had to we had the 54 calls 56 puts and we just rolled the 54 to the 56 and so now we have the 56 straddle so when you go inverted and then you get priced to kind of consolidate what we like to do is start to Slowly, you know over a cycle or two start to get less and less inverted and so that's exactly what we do So now we're holding the 56 straddle in the May cycle, so let's take a look at that and If we go to our analyze tab You can see prices sitting right here. We've made a little bit of money since that roll So we're just playing the waiting game waiting for that theta to decay. Hopefully price continues to stay stabilized And we get a little bit of contraction in implied volatility and we'll get back to profits in our overall oil trade, which If you guys were with us, you know oil just may have that huge massive one-directional move and now prices really started to Consolidate so we're making back some of that loss that we had after that that huge move there So that's just the name of the game Stocks ETFs futures commodities. They don't go in one direction forever But you've got to stay mechanical and that's exactly what we're doing The other piece that we still have in the April cycle is this inverted straddle And you can see how much profit we've gotten back on this piece over $3,000 and you can see we're well over 50% today We're just getting to the point where it we're at 21 days to expiration in April So we rolled we rolled our other piece earlier in the week on Tuesday and then we just want to spread out our time We want to let either price move or time to go past Before we do the roll of this other piece So we're gonna hold it over the weekend and then we will roll this and we'll probably stay a little bit inverted to get a credit on the roll Or if it moves back to center, maybe we'll you know do another straddle around 55 ish or 57 We'll see what happens and we'll see what kind of credit we're getting on the roll to do so So look for that roll early next week to push both. So we'll have both of these pieces out in May Next trade was a closing adjusting trade in IWM So we closed out of our put vertical side the market continues to be strong price briefs breached our upside break even So we simply closed out the untested side and so we've got two of these now So if we take a look at IWM, we've got two different sets of short call verticals And so we're just looking for a little bit of price movement down to get back into range on Both of these and so just holding that For that short delta and right now we're at about four to one negative short delta To to our theta ratio. So, you know, I definitely don't want to add any more short delta Obviously if the market continues higher, we're going to naturally acquire a little bit more short delta But then we would want to get a little bit more aggressive about you know Adding in some long delta or cutting loose some short delta We like to keep that ratio between one to one and five to one of our short delta to theta ratio So right at about four to one now We've we've added a couple of earnings plays which are shorter term Both of which were pre earnings long calls giving us a little bit of long delta to help balance that So just trying to do little tweaks here and there to kind of keep in that range of the ratio that we like to keep Next trade closing adjusting trade in ZW So I was actually trying to get filled last week and getting this one closed out And then price ran away from us to the downside and to the point now where we had to make an adjustment So we went ahead and closed out our call vertical side And so we're just holding on to the put vertical side on our wheat trade So you can see prices barely outside of our range here Just need a little bit of upside movement to get back in and what I'm gonna look at doing is next week So we're 63 days to expiration in May. I want to let that wait till that gets under 60 So early next week, we might look to add another iron condor Of course, if we make a sharp move higher, we may just close this out So we'll see what happens, but the plan is if price kind of stays around where it is we will add another Centered iron condor out in the next expiration collect some more credit and continue to get some more theta decay on our wheat trade Next trade was a rolling adjusting trade in SMH So that's the semiconductor ETF and we rolled one of our short strangles from March Which had 23 days to expiration out to April with 57 and then we adjusted our puts from 90 to 100 And so let's take a look at what that looks like So if you take a look at SMH, we've still got the one set in March Which is hasn't been adjusted sitting right here We've got some profit not quite enough to take off yet. We get a little bit of downside movement early next week We'll go ahead and book that one. But the one we've got that we rolled out is this one here. So We've got the 100 put and the 85 call. So this is an inverted short strangle Price is sitting right here. So we need some downside to get back to a little bit more centered there and get back some profit in SMH but just in holding mode for now, you know, we would if price continues higher We will roll these calls down again, but we just did the roll So we've got we've got plenty of excuse me. I'd roll the puts up and but we just did that So we've got plenty of room to go before we'd make another adjustment on that piece Next trade was Opening trade in Costco. So we put on a pre earnings long call here for a couple reasons one looking for some Momentum and expansion in implied volatility going into earnings and then secondly as I mentioned here our ratio is about four to one on our Short delta to theta and so this helps add a little bit of long delta to help balance that overall portfolio now After we put that on Costco has come down a little bit. So we are down on this trade so still looking at for some upside movement in Costco before we booked that and and really gonna look to book this when we get, you know, about 30% Profit maybe maybe 20 now with the theta that's already decayed But if that implied volatility expands and we get an up move Both of those will help us. So we'll see what happens into next week Costco announces earnings on March 7th So we do have some some time there before that happens and and all I'm really looking at here is, you know We had a pretty decent little pop higher in Costco it started to Fill back in started to retrace a little bit So that's when we bought the call looking for a continuation higher. We we did take a little bit of heat the next day It's going a little bit up today But looking for a little bit of a continuation to the upside and it doesn't take much with these Just a little bit of price movement To get back those profits quick. So we're gonna hold this for a little bit into next week and see what happens Next trade was a closing trade in EWZ So we closed out our short strangle in EWZ booked a nice profit after having to make a couple adjustments I did mention we so we considered rolling this but with implied volatility at the percentile 30 We just ended up deciding to take profits book that trade And if we get a pop higher in IV we can always jump back in So we went ahead and closed out that so we are completely out of EWZ And when I looked earlier today I believe implied volatility is contracting Which that's Costco still EWZ Yeah, I mean look at this it's it's really declining today especially so IV percentile at 12 ivory rank of 11 So we're definitely gonna wait for implied volatility to get higher before we do anything else in EWZ Next trade closing trade in Baidu. So we did a pre earnings long strangle We teach mainly the pre pre earnings long straddle in our course But with the strangle we're just widening out those strikes using a little bit less buying power And we ended up taking a loss on this trade. We just we never got the price movement we needed We never got the IV contraction and And so we went ahead and took a loss on Baidu and you'll see after earnings they Price didn't move much either. So I know mike in the room Book some profits on holding his butterfly earnings strategy overnight through earnings. So good work on that one mike Next trade was an opening trade in this was yesterday our opening trade in adobe So again, kind of like Costco just a adding a little bit of long delta And b looking for that expansion of IV and higher price move into earnings And they don't announce until 314. So we've got a lot of time in this one But just looked like a good entry point on adobe So if we took a look here kind of the same story we had a Pop higher broke to to new highs just a little bit of a pullback And looking for a little continuation to the upside to benefit that trade And we're currently up on this one up about 200 bucks and Gonna hope for a little bit more upside into next week And if we do we'll go ahead and book that one looking for 30 plus percent profit on that one And that is Adobe so those are all of our alerts. Let's take a look at some of our other positions starting with 6b The british pound see we've got a strangle here still very centered Nothing to do there, but wait already mentioned oil. Yes We've got this long put vertical that we're holding for that short delta exposure You see prices barely within range here. Just looking for a little bit more downside to benefit that Natty gas we've had some good movement some good upside movement in natty gas These are both of our positions combined Beginning of this week price is kind of hanging out right here near our break even got a nice move up gained some good profits in Back in that gas this week. So just holding for a little bit more upside and waiting for some more time to pass We've got 32 days left to expiration In that gas and so similar to what we did in oil once we get under We're probably right around under 60 Days in the next cycle for nat gas If we pull that up, uh, yeah 62 so You know sometime next week or maybe the week after We will uh, we'll look to roll one of those pieces out to may and then You know continue to manage the other ones spread out those rolls. So we're not doing it all in the same day And just continue to manage that And again kind of like oil. I mean we had this huge move up huge move lower Nat gas has been extremely volatile for the last few months But we're but we're okay. We're we're making our way back just fine So just going to continue to manage those mechanically I mentioned wheat adobe cosco di a we've still got a couple sets of Excuse me short call verticals here Excuse me just one. Uh, we closed out the other one. Uh prices moved well out of range I mean stocks have just been so strong Any little tiny bit of pullback just to just kind of a little bit of a reversion to the mean would be extremely helpful Uh with especially with the the amount of short delta that we're holding now that 4 to 1 ratio That's going to be a huge benefit if we could ever just get a little bit of a downside movement in stocks That would help us all the way across the board Not only would it help our positions that we've currently got short delta on But the market going down would also Create a spike in implied volatility giving us giving us the opportunity to put on some more new entry trades So man, this I mean this has just been a huge one-way move all the way since uh, basically the The beginning of the year And so just hoping for a little bit of pullback at some point if if it does continue to grind higher I mean we've got to play what the cards that were dealt, right? So we've got to continue to manage those deltas. We don't want to get too short And and and so that's what we'll do Eem we've got on this uh short call vertical here price is barely out of range here Just looking for some downside to get back into range on that one Eww we've got a short strangle Where price is kind of hanging out right here not really any profit or loss on that one yet just playing the waiting game Iwm I mentioned that one IYR We've got two pieces here. We've got this iron condor kind of this tight iron condor where you can see Price is still within range here. Just could use a little bit of downside movement there to benefit that And then we've got our other short call vertical from our other iron condor Which we've still got on here. So just looking for some downside Now what i'm going to do next week is we'll look to either close or roll this one I mean you can look and you can see by just the gray shaded area. That's the one standard deviation move So it's very little chance of this getting back to range. So I don't want to just sit here and let this Theta decay. We'll go ahead and close that one out or potentially roll Depending on where we're at with everything next week In video, we've got an iron condor here still very centered got some profit not quite enough to take off yet In the cues we've got two sets of short call verticals Just looking for some downside movement to get back into range there And on this one same story except this one is in range just looking for some downside to benefit that I mentioned smh Uh, I think yeah, yeah, yeah spy We've got a couple things here. We've got an iron condor where price is hanging out here near the upper end of the range So getting back to center would be nice And then we've also got this short call vertical spread From our previous iron condor same story just looking for some downside to get back into range there XLk, this is a long put vertical that we we originally put on for that short delta exposure And similar to IYR. I mean this thing has got a very little chance of getting back into range So we will look to potentially close or roll that one next week XLv same kind of thing short short call vertical This one's barely out of range looking for some downside to get back in there And lastly Xrt We've got this adjusted strangle where price is still in range here But could also use some downside for that So as you can see, we got a lot of positions that they could use some of that downside But we'll just continue to manage our deltas You don't want to over adjust because we've seen such a significant move higher in stocks That you know just just a little move down just another you know Just a a couple percent is going to get us right back into a position where we where it sucks out a lot of that short delta Give us some profits allows us to book some trades enter some new ones So you don't want to over adjust those deltas, but you definitely want to be aware of them All right guys, hope that was helpful. Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you next week